praising poetry

Christopher Hitchens' "When the King Saved God" (Vanity Fair) is a paean to the poetry and prose of the Tyndale/King James translation:

For generations, it provided a common stock of references and allusions, rivaled only by Shakespeare in this respect. It resounded in the minds and memories of literate people, as well as of those who acquired it only by listening. [...] A culture that does not possess this common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one. To seek restlessly to update it or make it "relevant" is to miss the point, like yearning for a hip-hop Shakespeare.

"Its abandonment by the Church of England establishment," writes Hitchens, "is yet another demonstration that religion is man-made, with inky human fingerprints all over its supposedly inspired and unalterable texts."

update (4/12):
Here is a great illustration--a revision of Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" (h/t: John Loftus) that should perhaps be retitled "The Creation of God:"